Liam King

Through this project, I hoped to explore the deep-rooted issue of hegemony in the Philippines by using former President Duterte’s war on drugs as a case study. Hegemony, by definition, is the dominance of one social group over another, and, unfortunately for the Philippines, it has been ingrained in the societal system for much of its history.

Duterte’s war on drugs exemplifies how cultural and discursive hegemony can be intertwined for dominant classes to maintain their power. Between 2016 and 2022, thousands of civilians were murdered extrajudicially by police and special forces, and through planting evidence, many of the victims’ deaths were covered up by creating false narratives. Through this animation, I hope to depict an interplay of power and confidentiality during Duterte’s campaign and reveal the injustices that have been covered up by the Filipino police and government.

I considered many references to Filipino society to portray the injustices during Duterte’s campaign. What I ended up choosing was a Filipino cemetery, which, by nature, is incredibly crowded compared to traditional cemeteries. The density of these cemeteries speaks to how the underprivileged have a lack of resources to bury their loved ones, which forces them to compact tombs tightly and on top of one another. I believe that the overcrowding of the cemeteries also connects to the overwhelming number of murders that occurred during the war on drugs, and how Duterte targeted underprivileged communities.

Because my aim was to bring attention to the unjust killings of the Filipino government, I wanted my project to act as a ‘reveal’ of the truth in a sense. Despite never having worked with animation, I decided to challenge myself with this project because animation is an active medium that would allow me to effectively tell a story and build up to a reveal.